Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (22 page)

“Aw nuts,” the Doc exclaimed. “Another one of them fool nut cults is what it sounds like to me. They never last.”

“I dunno,” Long Drink disagreed. “They been goin’ for about five years now, and they just started setting up colonies, like: “Satellite Farms” they call ‘em, better’n half a dozen, all over the country.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “What got me, though, was how little attention they paid to their physical growth. That just seemed to happen by itself; while they put their real attention on the Main Game: gettin’ straight with each other, so’s they could live together. Seems to me like the whole world oughta be doin’ that. Seems like if you be a better person, you have you a better life. Seemed to me like The Farm was Callahan’s Place for hippies.”

“You’re crazy,” the Doc burst out. “Sure, there’s a thousand ham-headed gurus creepin’ out from under every burning bush these days. The old-time religion went into the drink, so they’re scratching for a new one like hungry hens, goin’ in for mysticism and the occult and astrology and the late God only knows what-all. But I’m damned if I see the resemblance between a Jesus-freak revival meeting and this here bar.”

“Doc, Doc,” I said softly, “Slow down a bit. Yes, they’re mass-producing religions like popcorn these days, and some of them are as plain silly as the sixteen-year-old perfect goombah with his divine Maserati and his sacred ulcer. But that don’t make ‘em all crazy. The point is that all them con-men must be filling some kind of powerful need, or they’d be working some more profitable grift. And I think I agree with LongDrink: the need they’re filling is the same one that brings folks to Callahan’s Place.”

“Hmmph,” the Doc snorted. “And what need is that, pray tell?”

“It’s pretty easy to see. For the last century or two we turned our attention to the physical world, to mastering the material plane at the expense of anything else. A lot of that, I’m compelled to believe, had to do with Raksha and his kind, but the tendency was there to exploit. And so we’ve got a world in which physical miracles are commonplace-and nobody’s happy. We got what it takes to feed the whole three billion of us-and half of us are starving. You can show a dozen guys murderin’ each other on TV but you can’t ever show two people making love. A naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman. Ain’t it about time we started trying to get a handle on love, from any and all directions?

“I don’t know how come this Farm doesn’t collapse like all the other communes. I don’t know how come a government with the best propaganda machine ever built failed to sell a war to a country, for the first time in history. I don’t know how come three or four guys managed to pull down a corrupt thug of a president. I don’t even understand how come all the things this here bar stands for haven’t been drowned under a sea of the drunks and brawlers and hookers and hoodlums every other bar gets, why the only people that seem to come here are the ones that need to, that ought to, that have to. That’s the real miracle of this joint, you know, not our telepaths and little green men!

“I can’t explain any of this stuff, Doc, but couldn’t it be that there’s some kind of new force loose on the world, like a collective-unconscious response to Raksha and the Krundai, a new kind of energy that’s trying to put us all back on the right track before it’s too late? Couldn’t it be that, now we’ve climbed out on a material-plane limb and started sawing at it, some mysterious force is trying to teach us how to fly? Whether it’s our own stupidity or Krundai manipulation, we’ve stumbled across things that make a cobalt bomb look harmless: the human race is an idiot child in an arsenal. Couldn’t it possibly be that under all these pressures, we’re beginning to grow up?”

“Days what I loined from Rachel,” Fast Eddie spoke up suddenly, startling me-I was so wrapped up in my own eloquence, I’d even forgotten my customary drawl and folksy speech-patterns.

“What do you mean, Eddie?” Callahan asked.

“Everybody’s got roots in de past,” Eddie explained. “But dey’s got roots in de future too.”

There was an awed silence. “I’ll be damned,” Callahan said after awhile. “That’s twice in one night you’ve surprised me, Eddie. I never thought there was anything but music in that head o’ yours. Guess even I can learn something in this joint.” He shook his head and poured himself another shot.

LongDrink tried to lighten the mood some. “I’ll teach you something, Mike. What do you get when you put milk of magnesia in a glass of vodka?”

The Doc made a face. “Everybody knows that one: a Phillips screwdriver. The hell with that stuff: I want to hear more about this `collective-unconscious’ jazz.”

LongDrink grinned. “Sounds like this place to a T.”

“Can it, I said. That `mysterious force’ stuff you were talkin’ about, Jake-did you mean that literally?”

I thought about it. “You mean like a gang of sixthcolumn missionaries, Doc? A bunch of guys working undercover like Raksha an’ his friends, only in reverse? No, I don’t really think that’s the way of it … wups!”

Reaching for my glass without looking, I knocked it skittering across the bar, and leaped to grab it before it could fall into Callahan’s lap. I froze for a moment, leaning half-over the bar-but I’ve always rather prided myself in being quick on the uptake.

” … on the other hand,” I continued calmly, “maybe that’s exactly right. Who knows?”

And Callahan-who was still sitting as I had seen him, his legs folded under him in the full lotus, suspended a good three feet off the floor-winked, poured my glass brimfull of Bushmill’s, and grinned.

“Not me,” he lied, and puffed on his cigar.

“Hey youse guys,” cried Eddie, eyes on the clock above us, “Happy New Year!”